Summary: A very long and deep shelter which has multiple panels of Aboriginal rock art, with both charcoal and red ochre motfs.

This long and deep overhang has an interesting history: what would once have been an impressive panel of Aboriginal art has been defaced by modern grafitti, including a comment written by an escapee from the nearby corrective training school for boys: “Michael John Thomas Mildura. Absconded from Mt. Penang Training School 1978”. (Boys who tried to escape from Mount Penang were known as ‘dingoes’, and escaping was ‘going dingo’.)

In documenting the Aboriginal art in this shelter, Bob Pankhust named it the “Insect Cave” as it has a number of insects depicted on the walls. He described the motifs below as two beetles or a beetle and a native bee (native bees, according to Pankhurst, being a local totem).

This resembles a bird, rather than an insect.

On the left hand side of the main panel is “a Daramulan type figure with a woman near it and also an infilled man or kangaroo” (unfortunately covered by much graffiti).

Less visible on the same panel are two motifs in red ochre, one of them a human figure.

1X3A7441 lbk Dawson Street Insect Cave1X3A7441 yre Dawson Street Insect Cave

The same panel has a number of figures in charcoal including a kangaroo and a human figure, and in red ochre there’s a human figure, and what looks like part of a deity figure and a caterpillar.

1X3A7453 Dawson Street Insect Cave1X3A7453 yre Dawson Street Insect Cave

There are some more figures in charcoal on a lower panel, obscured by ferns.

Another very low panel has more human figures in charcoal.

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Aboriginal Sites by National Park

Yengo National Park was an important spiritual and cultural place for the Darkinjung and Wonnarua People for thousands of years, and 640 Aboriginal cultural sites are recorded in the park and nearby areas.
Hornsby Shire - which is the largest LGA in the Greater Sydney Metropolitan region - contains approximately 600 recorded Aboriginal rock art sites (and over 1,200 Aboriginal heritage sites). These date back from thousands of years to post-European contact art.
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The Blue Mountains National Park (and surrounding areas along the Great Western Highway) is thought to have over a thousand indigenous heritage sites, although much of the park has not been comprehensively surveyed. The Aboriginal rock sites in the Blue Mountains include grinding grooves, stensils, drawing and rock carvings.